A retired seamstress and figure in the American Civil Rights Movement, most famous for her refusal in
1955 to give up a bus seat to a white man and her subsequent
arrest.

The Boycott

The Montgomery Bus Boycott
was a political protest campaign in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama intended
to oppose the city's policy of racial segregation on its public transit
system. The ensuing struggle eventually led to a United States Supreme
Court decision on November 13, 1956 that declared illegal the Alabama
and Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses.

The boycott was precipitated
by Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her bus seat in favor of a white passenger.
In Montgomery, the dividing line between the front seats reserved for
white passengers and the back ones reserved for black passengers was not
fixed. When the front of the bus was full, the driver could order black
passengers sitting towards the front of the bus to surrender their seat.
Rosa Parks' seat was in that border area. When she was arrested on December
1, 1955, the local civil rights organizations, with which Ms. Parks was
involved, saw this as the ideal opportunity for political action.

In church meetings with the
new minister in the city, Martin Luther King, Jr., a city-wide boycott
of public transit as a protest for a fixed dividing line for the segegrated
sections of the buses was proposed and passed.

The boycott proved extremely
effective, with enough riders lost to the city transit system to cause
serious economic distress. Instead of riding buses, boycotters organized
a system of carpools, with volunteer car owners carrying people to various
destinations. Some white housewives also drove their black domestic servants
to work, although it is unclear to what extent this was based on sympathy
with the boycott, versus the simple desire to have their staff present
and working. When the city pressured local insurance companies to stop
insuring cars used in the carpools, the boycott leaders arranged policies
with Lloyd's of London.

In response, opposing whites
formed chapters of the White Citizens Councils. Like the Ku Klux Klan,
the Councils sometimes resorted to violence: Martin Luther King's house
was firebombed and boycotters were physically attacked.

The city finally resorted to
arresting Dr. King for organizing the boycott. That move backfired by
bringing national attention to the protest. Eventually, the United States
Supreme Court affirmed a lower court decision that Alabama's racial segregation
laws for buses were unconstitutional, handing the protesters a clear victory.
This victory led to a city ordinance that allowed black bus passengers
to sit virtually anywhere they wanted. Martin Luther King capped off the
victory of a magnanimous speech
to encourage acceptance of the decision.

The boycott resulted in the
US civil rights movement receiving one of its first victories, and gave
Martin Luther King the national attention that would make him one of the
prime leaders of the cause.

Aspects of Parks' Story and Its Place in the Civil Rights Movement

While
few historians doubt Park's contribution to the civil rights movement
or the bravery of her refusal, some have questioned some of the more mythic
elements of her story.

Standard accounts of Parks'
act of civil disobedience in 1955 refer to her simply as a "tired
seamstress." Parks stated in her autobiography, My Life, that it
was not true that she was physically tired but was "tired of giving
in."

Also, some accounts downplay
her prior involvement with the NAACP
and the Highlander Folk School in an attempt to portray her as an average,
middle-aged woman and not a political activist.

Many accounts fail to clarify:
she was sitting in the "colored" section of the bus. With the
"white" section full, a white man wanted her to give up her
seat. That is, it was not a matter of protest on any level when she sat
down; the protest was in her refusal to give up a seat in the "colored"
section.

Parks was not the first African-American
to refuse to give up her seat to a white person. The NAACP accepted and
litigated other cases before, such as that of
Irene Morgan,
ten years earlier, which resulted in a victory in the Supreme
Court on Commerce Clause grounds. That victory only overturned state segregation
laws as applied to actual travel in interstate commerce, such as interstate
bus travel. The Rosa Parks case is considered the landmark because it
applied to all segregationist laws, not just those affecting interstate
commerce.

The NAACP
had additionally considered but rejected some earlier protesters deemed
unable or unsuitable to withstand the pressure of a legal challenge to
segregation laws (see
Claudette Colvin and
Mary Louise Smith).
The selection of Parks for a test case supported by
the
NAACP
has been speculated to be in part because she was employed by the
NAACP.

Awards and Honors

Rosa Parks in the year 2000. After a lifetime of activity fighting racism, Parks
was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1999.

The Rosa Parks Library and Museum
in Montgomery, Alabama, was dedicated in November 2001. It tells the
story of the events leading up to her historic act of civil disobedience, and
how her simple act connects to the larger tapestry of the civil rights movement.